This is the true story, of six strangers, picked to live in a house, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens, when people stop being polite, and start getting real. The Real World.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Last week our scientific discussion covered gravity. Now you know why an north-ocean storm that spins counter-clockwise is called a Hurricane while its clockwise-spinning cousin in the southern hemisphere is called a Typhoon. Collaborators on that article: Sir Isaac Newton and Captain James Cook.

The thing about time is this: it’s a much more fluid thing than most of us were taught about in school. Atomic clocks circling the earth in high-speed satellites fall behind 40 nanoseconds every 10 hours compared to earth-bound clocks. The clocks in space just stay young longer than the earthling-clocks. And only because their relative speed is higher.

This fluidity in time was also jarring on Christmas. Being 21 hours behind New Zealand in time zones, more than a few dazzled Americans got Christmas calls from the NZ Boys on America’s Christmas Eve. The New Zealand Boys gave all those people calls from “the future.” The phone calls couldn’t even take place in real time – there’s a four-second time lag.

But walking around in New Zealand, it certainly doesn’t feel like the future. Looking around, things feel a little off. It’s like New Zealand carries with it an echo of something else. But then it all made sense. I put the following together

Mullets by the hundreds

Even hotter female mullets

Mohawks

Florescent clothing

New Zealand is still in the 80s! Somehow, when our plane was making that 12 hour flight across the Pacific, time on earth did something else. It slipped behind. Down in New Zealand, Michael Jackson is still cool, straight guys wear cut-off jean shorts, the air is less polluted, MC Hammer sets all the trends, and cell phones are still the size of boxing gloves.

Science mystifies us again. But the boys have a plan. We know all the trends yet to hit New Zealand, and we’re going to pre-empt all of them with our own fads. Our plan is to bring in boy bands BEFORE we roll out with girl bands, so that we can end the boy-band trend before it hits such lows as 2ge+her and 5ive. We plan to send Michael to rehab before he goes after the kids, and this time his mean dancing moves will stay cool clear into the 21st century. We’ll get on that fuel-alternative car, we’ll stop tract housing before it starts, we’ll invest in Yahoo, we’ll do Reality TV before Road Rules. It’s like a second chance at life. First step, finish off the mullets.